Scaling down the start-up nation

Tel Aviv seeks to brand itself as the start-up city in its technology-focused festival

When Taiwanese entrepreneur Jason Hsu was handed a copy of Startup Nation, the ubiquitous innovation bible that preaches the gospel of Israel as a mecca of hi-tech invention, his instinct was not that he needed to establish a connection between Taiwan and Israel. As someone who had focused on developing local urban working hubs, co-founding a Taipei chapter of TED talks on innovation, the pairing of places he was drawn to was more targeted: Tel Aviv and Taipei.“I work in various capacities with cities around the world,” explains Hsu, whose work has included an urban hackathon called Future Map, which attempts to solve urban design challenges in 72 hours. “I thought it would be great to establish some sort of Taipei-Tel Aviv exchange network where the entrepreneurs and designers can meet and collaborate.”